Nihilism

You probably pity me my brother and I pity you. If there’s something I’ve learned in the past couple of years, it’s that the elders are not necessarily the wiser because many of us are mislead.

I know you care about me but you’re bringing me down. Just because you topped the class in college doesn’t make you smarter. If I have to label you anything, I’d call you an intelligent fool because you know so much but you do not understand the fact that we live in two different worlds. You have decided to flee to the US and work. I do not hold those ambitions, not unless it’s for the greater good of society. I feel sorry for you following the mainstream path of getting an education and getting a job.

I understand why education is important and I have my alternatives for not getting a degree at the moment. To me, knowledge is important, not a certificate. I know how I can get to the point better than you have reached. I know this because you have not seen the world. How do I know this? To start with, you have no respect for what I am doing. Nothing I do will ever seem right unless I do it your way. If only you could get yourself out of the corporate world and see right through to the real world, you would know how to live.

You’re blinded by the fact that you earn so much there. What you are doing is worthless and you are replaceable. You’re a corporate slave doing what you do to find a place in place in a competitive society, not trying to bring the change that is needed. You’re a drone bee and I do not intend my life to be that way. I have choices to make and figure out ways of how I can light up tomorrow. Sitting in a chair and following orders is not something I’m too compatible with. Though I lack experience, I know my potential, and the things I can do and I cannot. You, on the other hand, have been too far away to understand the lives we live here. You are finding comfort in creating someone else’s country and with your lack of innovation, you will not find anything worth doing here. You have set yourself in a trap. You might possess the skills that a first world country needs, but no one here is ready to pay you for the reputation you hold in the land of opportunities which I won’t be surprised if you call it a home. For someone who has already set a different mentality, I do not want you to come back and mess me around with the reputation you have earned by fixing someone else’s problem.

Grow up brother. See reality as it is. I’ll work on what I’m best at and what I’m doing should not bother you. What your family has done for me is not the same as what you have done for me. You have no manners and you are trying to do something to feel good about yourself by taking away my freedom. If you have no respect for me, I hold no respect for you either. Don’t show me the silver lining of your life because I will not be happy following your path. Find yourself. You are out in your own thoughts. Only you can save yourself. I hope you figure out that there is more in this world than just money. It isn’t entirely power and it will never be my happiness.

When you’re in your teens or early twenties, you should rather be focused on developing yourself. Jumping too quick into something big has probably got to one of the biggest mistakes I have made.

There is no substitute for time at all. It’s the most important element of your investment. People will tell you so many stories of theirs when they’ve been simultaneously involved in half a dozen projects when they were starting up. Everyone will give you advises because it worked for them or because they made a mistake and learned from them. But it’s all advice. You do learn from other people’s mistake but everything you’ve gone through will give you your unique experience. Right now, I have too many things crammed in my head and I’m muddled. I’m at a point where I know what I’m good at but I don’t want to do it. Without motivation, the void is getting hollower every passing moment. I’m unable to work with efficiency because my inner light refuses to live a life so mundane. Oh, what have I got myself into. Burning down the bridges has got me into a heap of trouble but I know that better things are there for me to achieve.
While I’d like to start something on my own, I know that I’ll have to be incredibly patient. The things I want to achieve in life will ever be fulfilled if I work on it consistently. I have lost the will to do something I thrived for ages ago. By learning from someone’s experience, I’ve known even before I start that in the future, there’s a dead-end. Why would I go after something when I know the game is a loop, so the dead-end is actually never-ending. One, the unique number, is what I’m after. How do I become different that someone else? How can I walk the streets every day and see feel no one else can comprehend? Knowing that what I’m doing to do is going to lead me is deafeningly sad. There is so much pain in knowing and ignorance truly is bliss. Mad people have happier lives than the merry people who always seek for a reason to live. The days go by and everything seems the same but deep inside everyone is changing. We’re either getting frustrated every day, giving up on what we want to do, or either striving vigorously to achieve what you want because you know what you want to do. And then there’s the rest of us in limbo, with no idea what’s up next for us. Deep inside, we’re al dying because of something.
There’s a long list of things I want to achieve. I know that everything is reachable but I can only go for one thing at a time. If you try to get the best of both worlds, you’re only piling the misery. One person told me that the hardest thing is to be consistent on what you’re working on. I refuse to believe in him. To me, the hardest things are to figure out what you want to do. If you find out what is it that you truly love, you will love the pain it brings. When you’re working on something you love, you always compromise, not sacrifice. When if feels that it’s not worth the extra effort or whatever you do is meaningless and only a helm to pass another day, it’s time to get out. Though I really wanted to become loyal to people or an institution, staying in one place for too long will drive you bonkers. Every day should be like the first day of spring when you feel that today is a better day than yesterday. Today should be brighter and warmer, the flowers should bloom, the bees should come out and the rain should drizzle. Not all places will feel like home and not all people are here to stay. You should understand that so many things you do are meaningless and you only do it to keep up and live another day. Every day you are unmotivated and feel worthless will draw you closer to your death. Figure out yourself and find out what it makes you happy because no one can find your happiness for you. In every phase of life, you have to move on to an another stage.
The nihilist in me knows that happiness is just a state of mind. It understands the physical needs and the psychological needs. We need both of them to survive. It put me in a place where I’d never want stay and I die every day knowing that I bit off more than I could chew. I never even got close to my potential but I know who I am. This is just a bad time for me. Someday, everything will make sense and I am all but a ghost right now, with no idea of what I’m doing and only making things worse and scaring people. I know that there’s a lot I want to do but I’m not ready. The lessons I’ve learned have made me resilient, or else, this frustration would have galloped me by now. As for now, I still search for what connects my body and my soul. I’m alive, I’m breathing, but I what I need to do is live.

There was a point when I thought I could change the world with my little acts of kindness, but it doesn’t happen this way. Learning this fact changed the way I viewed people completely. I let the world decided what is wrong and what is right. How I wish I was still a child who still cared about the little things that could make a difference but a world so competitive and harsh changed the way I saw it completely, but I’ve had enough. I come back to a quote by Hendrix that goes something like, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

I grew up as a Buddhist and this dude Buddha was my hero, an epitome of what I wanted to be. Like him, I was raised privileged; having whatever I want but hearing stories of him made me want to become a good person. There was this story when a cousin of Siddartha Gautam shot a goose and the Buddha took the injured bird to cure him with medicine. This story will forever be the most enlightening story that I’ve heard. It is a benchmark of where it started and what I wanted to be. I’m not being religious here. If it isn’t Buddhism, kindness is my religion. However, my universe has changed so much. While acts of kindness were something I tried to give out to people, I never really got anything in return. Your act of kindness is something you will be exploited for in this world. It turns out that not everyone shares the same vision as you and soon, people are bothered that you have a pure heart and they don’t. When people stopped appreciating what I’ve done for them, I changed. A little part of me died that day, making me one of those cruel people called human beings who have a history of being driven my power. I was never raised this way, but society changed me. Today, I have rediscovered who I am. I might have been born a human being–the species of destruction–but I’ll not let the world get me down and become a part of the dirge of this civilisation.

Meeting the wrong people has made such a big impact on who I am. In their defence, they only tried to show me the real world and tried to make me ready for what lies ahead. The world really is cruel and having friends in the later phase of life who has been through great heaps of crap taught me to see the cruelty I’d not seen before. The value of money has changed so much since it first came into existence. It’s all about the demand and supply, not the effort and value. When you grow up and when you don’t want to rely on your parents for you to have a life of luxury so you can contribute to this world, money becomes security. I’d never seen money this way. I thought organisations collected funds so they could help the world like my parents gave me pocket money so I could invest my energies at someplace needed, but the harsh reality is that the world doesn’t work until there’s a benefit for themselves. A big dream of mine was to work for an INGO as a kid but things changed when I saw how they utilise finds rashly and that someone’s pure contribution to make this world a better place has been utilised to gain status. I don’t want to use the money that has been granted for change to benefit someone else in making their lives better. I thought volunteer meant sacrificing your valuable time to create a better world without getting anything but personal satisfaction back but this term social service turns out to be purely backed my money. Capitalism is perhaps the greatest source of evil there exists in society. While some put it to good use, many are simply slaves to its reign. When an individual economy is much important that the benefit of the people as a whole, wars will rage so people can have a life of luxury. Can I change the way things are? I think yes. I need to go back and be reborn.

One of the worst pieces of advice I’ve been given my people is that in some point in life, you have to walk alone to achieve what you want. I really wish life never had to pan out this way. When everyone walks alone and have their own intentions of getting higher, the goal becomes selfish. Walking a lonely road changed me in ways I thought I never would. It made me forget that kindness is contagious. When everyone is by themselves, it is the survival of fittest. When your intentions are to live a better life only for yourself, when will the one who need help ever live a life? I thought I could change the world and I had good support as a kid, at least encouragement, to make this world better but then everyone walked away. Being solitary for too long might drive you crazy. It makes you admit that if you cannot beat them, you join them, and I let myself become a part of the charade. But lately I’ve met a wise man who hasn’t achieved so much in life and I asked him why his wisdom has not put him in a place where he deserves to be and he said, “It turns out you cannot do everything all alone.” This has touched me because now I know where I’ve drifted apart and why I haven’t been able to succeed. I reached my goal on my own when I needed support and people with a similar vision to create a better universe for the next generation, but unfortunately, even if people appreciated what I wanted to do, they never did tag along. Now I need help. I need people to assist me in creating my dream.

Someday, things will make sense. The greed driven world will realise that there is more to the world than just priming through life and that the important things in life need to be addressed. Ignorance has turned us into a social comfort seeking beast and we do not want to break free of the gravity holding us down. Someday the chains will be broken. The real heroes are the scientists, not the politicians. Perhaps someday, someone privileged will look down and see that the random act of kindness of someone can make a significant difference in someone’s life. Deep inside I believe there is good in everyone and that there will still be people who will inspire you to try to fix every hole in the world. Whoever told me, “It isn’t my responsibility to mend the world so broken,” you are wrong because who will fix it if I wont? It is my responsibly and you, the fallacy ass, you have a bigger responsibility because you need to stop revelling on the profit in the balance sheet and use the resources you have to make repairs to every dent that you’ve created. If we don’t change now, we never will.